A suitcase full of tens of thousands of previously unpublished documents by Franz Kafka might soon be made public, thanks to a recent ruling by a Tel Aviv judge. The papers—which include Kafka’s notebooks and letters—have been under dispute since the death of their final owner in 2007. Kafka left the papers to his executor after his death in 1924, and in 1939, Max Brod transported them to Palestine, where he left them to his secretary, who bequeathed them to her daughters. Despite protests from the daughters, this week’s ruling was made on the grounds that Brod stipulated in his will that his archive be left to the Library of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Joseph Ratzinger, aka the Pope, has signed a book deal to complete his trilogy on the life and times of Jesus. After covering his death and baptism, the final book in the cycle will be a “penetrating and theologically rich exploration of the infancy and early life of Jesus,” and will be out in the U.S. this December.
Meet Oyster, the Spotify for books.
Thousands of people who bought Hachette, HarperCollins, or Simon & Schuster e-books off Amazon or Apple in the past few years might be in for a small digital refund. Under the terms of a recent Department of Justice settlement (which has yet to be finalized) the publishers agreed to return between $0.30 to $1.32 per digital book to customers rather than go to court to face accusations of price-fixing.
Despite being a challenging fiction writer, David Foster Wallace used to make his students read mass-market authors—Joan Collins and Mary Higgins Clark and Thomas Harris. At the Rumpus, Michelle Dean considers why serious readers find comfort in bad books.
Geoff Dyer, Hari Kunzru, A.M. Homes, Andrew O’Hagan, and others try their hand at writing a novel in a single tweet.
